


Your name

by lluviathewolf



Category: Pumpkin Scissors
Genre: F/M, Musings on ranks/names/things, Randel thinks and also trips over his own words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lluviathewolf/pseuds/lluviathewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Randel may not talk much but that doesn't mean he's not thinking. Subtle Alice/Randel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your name

Someone- you can’t quite remember who- but someone once asked you if it bothered you that nearly everyone addressed you using your rank, instead of your name.

“As if you were a thing, and not a person!” you remember them saying indignantly.

At the time, you just answered no. You were used to it after all. You'd spent most of your life training, and then in the army itself since the war began, even if you had left it until you met her.

But from time to time, you can’t help remembering, and you can’t help thinking about it. You’ve been thinking about it for a while now.

A long time ago, before the words “war” and “massacre” were linked together in your mind, back when you were still in school, the teacher (who had run from the draft in the big city) in front of the class talked about “dehumanizing”. Something about a process of wearing people down, slowly making them less human.

Now you think back on the 901 training. It was a lot like the dehumanizing process the teacher talked about. Except it wasn’t slow. It couldn’t be, because of the war.

When you turned the lantern on, you weren’t meant to be you anymore, just death, inescapable and chilling.

You take a deep breath, trying to free yourself from the memories, return to the here and now. But in returning to the here and now, you are again reminded of names.

The Second Lieutenant is lifting another box out of the trailer attached to the car and carrying it over to the truck that would take the supplies to the village. The Warrant Officers had gone off to find where the drivers had run off to.

Second Lieutenant Alice L. Malvin is the one woman who has the power to make you question everything, but even more than that, has the power to make you believe.

At the moment, she’s struggling with a large box. Without really thinking about it, you move towards her, and by the time she gets it off the ground, you’re at her side, hooking your hands underneath it and lifting it out of her arms and into yours.

She stumbles a bit, not expecting the sudden absence of weight. “Corporal?” she asks, surprised.

She always calls you Corporal. And you always call her Second Lieutenant.

“I’ve got it,” you tell her, smiling as you walk over to the truck.

You can’t think of one person who actually calls you by your name.

It might be sad, but you’re okay with it. It is the army after all. Everyone except the Sergeant Major calls the Second Lieutenant by her rank, and even she called her “Miss Alice” and she called the Warrant Officers “Mr. Oreldo” and Mr. Machs”.

The Second Lieutenant is talking to you now.

“Corporal,” she says “don’t take things away from me that I can handle myself.”

You just smile at her. “Yes, Second Lieutenant,” you answer softly. You won’t stop, of course. Everything you can do to help her, you want to, even if it annoys her or gets her mad.

She probably can read that thought in your face, because she sighs before looking up at you and smiling before turning to get another box.

It’s a beautiful smile of course. Alice is a beautiful person.

“Alice,” you say, almost sigh, and it’s only when she begins to turn around that you realize you said it out loud.

It’s the smile’s fault. Her name slipped out like water out of a broken container. Or an overflowing one.

She’s staring at you now, beyond surprised and into the realm of shock. “What?”

“Ah! Nothing!” you say hurriedly, holding up your hands as if that will protect your secrets.

“You just said my name, didn’t you?”

You’re blushing. You know you are, but you can’t help it. “Yes, I did,” you say, almost tripping over the words. “But…”

She stares up at you for a couple moments after, waiting for you to come up with an answer, and when you don’t, she just sighs and smiles up at you again. “What’s with you today? Come on, Machs and Oreldo will be back any minute now. The sooner we finish up here, the sooner the villages will get their food!”

You look at her and smiled. “Yes.”

You both pick up another box and head to the truck.

Alice L Malvin is someone that Randel Oland can never get close to. But that’s okay. Because in Pumpkin Scissors, we’re a second lieutenant and a corporal. It’s perfectly natural for us to be together. Everyday, I can be with her, helping her, protecting her…even if I can’t say anything. Even if things can never change between us.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t mind that they don’t use my name. That way, they can’t use our names as an excuse to keep us in separate worlds.

You drop your box onto the truck bottom at the same time that Alice drops hers.

“Randel,” She says suddenly.

You straighten to attention automatically before realizing that not only did she use your name, she used your first one to boot.

She’s looking at you and smiling again. It’s a soft, soft smile.

“It’s a good name,” she says, as if it’s that simple, and it’s as if you can feel your heart expanding.

“Thank you…” you say softly, not sure what else to say.

“But” and she’s lowering her head and turning away, looking at the woods by the roadside, “we really shouldn’t use our names in front of others. They’ll... think we lack discipline.”

“Yes…” you agree slowly, sadly. You know she’s right, and you know it’s for the best, but you can’t help but think about the way she said your name, the name that no one had said in years, not since Kaplan…

“But…” Alice says slowly and slowly you lift your eyes towards her again. “It might…” She’s still not looking towards at you, so you can’t see her face. “It might be okay if we do it when we’re alone. Once in a while, anyways. Now, come on!” And her voice picks up now, sounding both a bit relieved and forcibly casual. “If we don’t hurry, they’ll be back before we’re done!”

She walks back to the truck quickly, and you, like always, follow, long legs eating up the ground that separates you from her.


End file.
